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LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and AndrewLinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and AndrewPosted Sep 1, 2010 12:19 UTC (Wed) by Hanno (guest, #41730)In reply to: LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew by jordanb Parent article: LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew
I liked the article and, sorry, don't like your comment.
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LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 1, 2010 13:26 UTC (Wed) by richardr (subscriber, #14799) [Link]
+1 - bizarre, unnecessary abuse. I enjoyed the article. I've been reading LWN for years, but I've never met any of the main kernel guys and hearing what they sound like in what passes for real life is interesting, whether you consider it to be fluff or not. Everything doesn't have to be about mutexes and memory management to be worth reading...
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 1, 2010 13:46 UTC (Wed) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]
I liked this soft article, though I wouldn't like to see many of the same kind.
A little notice:
Is that an insult? :)
"Those people are some of the richest in the world."
Well, give them the noble prize in economics, but that doesn't say much about their merits in IT.
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 1, 2010 22:49 UTC (Wed) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
I don't know about Andrew, but I guess if Linus sold some of the stocks he got in 2000 at the right time he is probably a millionaire.
The added benefit from having billions instead of millions is very very small in real life. Linus probably could buy a bigger house or an old jet fighter or something, but maybe he just doesn't need those things.
People can be totally happy when they have love, security and a bigger purpose in life. No billions needed.
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 2, 2010 9:58 UTC (Thu) by zzxtty (subscriber, #45175) [Link]
It's genuinely nice to see successful people not chasing money. I sometimes feel like I'm broken because I don't senselessly chase the stuff the way society makes me feel I should.
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 3, 2010 15:20 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Bear in mind that the phrase "same level as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison" in the context of the sentence before it doesn't mean the same level of goodness or respectability. It means the same level of influence. Well, give them the Nobel prize in economics, but that doesn't say much about their merits in IT. Astute, but then I didn't see any implication of merits in IT in what Jim said -- he mentioned only influence. And it was pure puffing. Linus doesn't have even close to the influence of those people. Their money alone, even without their positions, lets them change the world and affect people far more than Linus can. But giving them credit for their positions, Steve Jobs was (I presume) instrumental in changing the way people listen to recorded music and making tablet computers real. No patch Linus could have rejected would affect the world like that.
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 5, 2010 22:13 UTC (Sun) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link] Steve Jobs was (I presume) instrumental in changing the way people listen to recorded musicThat's a tough call. The ipod was far from the first such device to market. At best, you could say Jobs popularized the product for the mass market (largely due to good UI design and superior marketing).
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 5, 2010 22:55 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] That's a tough call. The ipod was far from the first such device to market. At best, you could say Jobs popularized the product for the mass market (largely due to good UI design and superior marketing).Ah, but that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. I'm distinguishing between invention and influence. Whoever made the first stored music player, or the first ten, didn't have much influence. People kept listening to tapes and CDs. Good UI design and superior marketing, if Jobs effected those, make him influential. But even if he had nothing to do with that, merely recognizing the potential and investing Apple money and reputation in building and selling millions of them would make Jobs highly influential. And the fact that history shows this wasn't a fluke and he could well do it again lets me put Jobs' influence in the present tense. And that's a level of influence Linus and Andrew simply don't have.
LinuxCon Brazil: Q&A with Linus and Andrew Posted Sep 7, 2010 12:40 UTC (Tue) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]
This is probably the most interesting point in the article.
What it actually says is a great deal about the difference between Free Software and proprietary software, or more accurately, between copyleft and copyright. The latter allows/causes enormous concentration of resources (wealth) when something is very successful, whilst the former doesn't, and as such could be deemed to be a more efficient use of resources overall. (It probably doesn't benefit the world much that Larry has such a huge yacht).
It's a complex question, because _some_ concentration of resource is useful for 'getting things done' (see 'popularising digital media players' below), but when it becomes excessive it ceases to be a benefit (overall). On the other hand the super rich do sometimes get useful things done that otherwise aren't getting done (see 'deep flight' submersibles, and contributions of messrs Fosset and Branson). Is that sort of thing a sufficient benefit to justify the general inequity of the model?
No doubt economists write books about this stuff.
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